I Can Get Better or I Can Get Drunk

     It occurred to me in my first of two meetings tonight how great and amazing my life has become.  The further into the topic of complacency we went, the further my mind went in to that dark place full of fear.  Holy shit your life is amazing right now.  You better not fuck it up. Once that thought ran through my head I realized I am still a very sick person.  I am absolutely a drug addict and an alcoholic.  If one were to look at the entire reel of my life, there are two things that would happen.  First they would realize that I am the common factor in all the dumb shit that has ever happened in my life, and two, that it was obvious that I was never afraid of dying; it was living that really scared me.  In that moment of clarity tonight sitting in that club house for the first time ever I saw myself screwing up before it actually happened.   The fear of success is no longer living in the subconscious. It is out, real, raging, and ready to take all of my hard work and opportunity and toss that shit right out the window…  I have been listening to Lucero’s new album and there is a line that I keep hearing over and over.  “I can get better or I can get drunk.” So what is it going to be this time around?

     Last night I interviewed a band from Denver over the telephone.  They were calling from the studio in LA, and we discussed the things that are happening from doing the work.  As the conversation went on and we dipped in and out of spirituality, I realized how aligned our timing was and that great things were happening for them and me in a similar manner almost on the same calendar.  It was at that point I thought about how much has come my way in the last few weeks.  I am experiencing real opportunities for the first time ever.  What I mean by that is very small pieces of a very large puzzle have been laid at my feet, now it is up to me to fit them all together and put it all into action.  This is much different from landing a great job where my buddy is my boss.  The path is not laid out for me yet but I have been given the tools to do the job.  And I will be honest, this has never happened to me before.  Everything that I have been promised that would happen from sobriety is literally landing at my feet one by one.  So I am at a cross roads.  I can do what I have always done and sabotage the whole damn thing and blame it on anything but myself.  Or I can slowly, and faithfully, put one foot in front of the other, staying focused on doing what is right and not what feels good.  This means I have to dive further into my recovery and continue this self-examination and face the dark side in me and fix what is broken.  It means that I need to go to more meetings than I am now, do more service work, be more honest, and most importantly be more forgiving.  I must let go of more and give away all that I have.  Any deviation from more action in my recovery will be devastating.  Sure I already do a lot.  But as my father says, “You can always do more.” Exercising is my path to meditation and a conscience contact with my higher power today, and in the last week, my ugliness has diverted me from that path.  So before I get too far off and sink the entire ship it is time to pull out my trusty map and navigate back to the correct course.  Or I will surely loose it all!

      I will have eighteen months sober on the 14^th of May.  That is not a whole lot of time in sobriety, but it absolutely puts me in the big boy phase of my recovery.  I am now sober, the fog has cleared and this where the real work begins.  No more time outs, I am getting sober left.  It is time to be a man and handle my business and achieve everything I have ever wanted. So like the song says, “I can either get better, or I can get drunk.”  So I think I will leave the getting drunk to the one that has not had enough yet.  I have places to go and things to do.